THE CRUSADE OF EPICS: Results -> A Change Of Seasons wins!

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Results of Round 5:
Alestorm - Sunset On The Golden Age
Porcupine Tree - Arriving Somewhere But Not Here

Iced Earth - Clear The Way (December 13th, 1862) (Nominated by @Brigantium)
vs.
Vanden Plas - On My Way To Jerusalem (Nominated by @MindRuler)
 
“Clear The Way” has a seductive guitar tone and it rocks hard. The vocals are pretty good during the chorus, but pretty bad everywhere else. The lazy Maidenesque harmonized section isn’t great, but the interlude that starts around the halfway mark is cool, and the rest of the song is suitably epic. Unfortunately, it also blatantly plagiarizes the ascending guitar bit from Rush’s “Anthem” and does so repeatedly, to the point where it throws me out of the song every time I hear it. Shame on you, Jon Schaffer.

Vanden Plas is one of those bands I’ve often heard of, but never actually listened to before now. “On My Way To Jerusalem” takes a while to get going, but once it does it’s a great mix of lighter prog rock and heavier prog metal that takes you on a long and winding journey with flavors of Dream Theater and Yes. There’s something a little weird about the vocals that I can’t quite put my finger on, but otherwise there’s not much to criticize here.

Had the vocals been better and the music theft-free I might have gone the other way here, but sorry @Brigantium, honor demands that I go with @MindRuler ’s nominee instead. Winner: Vanden Plas
 
Schaffer, Schaffer, Schaffer... where the hell was this energy, this passion, this mojo over the past fifteen years? “Clear The Way (December 13th, 1862)” is a terrific cap on a terrific return to form for Iced Earth. Somehow the Civil War provides Jon with the inspiration needed to make great pieces of music. Before it, the Gettysburg Trilogy showcased his strengths as a writer, and now Fredericksburg has booted his ass back into gear. It’s a triumphant epic.

I will say that I think Schaffer leans into the ambient piece that makes up the intro, interlude, and outro a bit too often, but beyond that, this is just killer. Stu is like a bulldog, summoning up everything he’s worth and delivering a terrific performance, particularly in the passionate, inspirational chorus. The instrumental section is so cool, really groovy stuff. And just overall, it’s a great song. It’s time to leave behind the Something Wicked Saga for good, I think. But the Civil War topic seems much more interesting, even though I wouldn’t wanna jinx that with a look like Schaffer at the helm, lol.

But even with this burst of inspiration, nothing could have prepared me for how fucking good Vanden Plas’s “On The Way To Jerusalem” is. I’d never even heard of them, but that intro hooked me right away, and led me down a path of absolute wonder. I don’t know if it’s perfect, but this was only my first listen after all. I think the vocalist could put some more soul into it, really sell it more yknow? But damn this was good and I wanna return to it — and probably even look into more of their discography.

I went into this expecting a win for Iced Earth. But that got lost somewhere On My Way To Jerusalem.
 
Clear The Way is obviously awesome and I am voting for it. Maybe it's just my Iced Earth bias, but I didn't feel like the Vanden Plas song was anything special. It wasn't bad by any means, but just far from memorable. Clear The Way slays it.
 
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Results of Round 6:
Iced Earth - Clear The Way (December 13th, 1862)
Vanden Plas - On My Way To Jerusalem

Enslaved - Hiindsiight (Nominated by @Night Prowler)
vs.
Machine Head - Halo (Nominated by @Collin)
 
This Enslaved song started off promisingly enough, but then it took a bizarre left turn. Most of it is bright, laid back prog rock with a cool atmosphere, but then it’s intercut with some other shitty Gollum-vocalled doom metal song that doesn’t fit at all. Then Gollum bleeds into the prog-rock for a while, producing nothing of value other than the unintentional hilarity of hearing cackly phlegmatic vocals accompanied by a saxophone, before finishing off as the much better original prog rock song that I would have preferred hearing rather than this patchwork mess of clashing styles.

This Machine Head song starts off dull and then turns into a pointless nu-metal grind with lame, mostly non-melodic poser screaming for vocals, occasionally broken up by bouts of vocal harmony. This turns into C-list Maiden worship about halfway through, then tries to get all delicate before finishing up with more stupid bro-yelling. I’m left feeling like these guys sound like second-rate Avenged Sevenfold, and I don’t even like Avenged Sevenfold.

This match is a lose-lose proposition for the listener, but a choice has to be made — so, sorry @Collin, but @Night Prowler ’s hot mess has more substance to it than yours does. Winner: Enslaved
 
Halo.

Yeah, I listened to a lot of The Blackening. Primarily because because I had a tickets for Metallica back in '09 and Machine Head were opening for them. So I gave it a spin and got hooked. Listening to it now, I hear it way difirently, but it's still a better track than Hiindsiight.
 
Much prefer the death-y bit of Enslaved to the proggy saxophone stuff, if that was actually a saxophone, it sounded synthentic. Machine Head's song was okay in places, some lovely guitar, but also slid between posturing thrash, mellow plonky chords and modern metal. Neither of these songs particularly justify being overly long or using that time well, to me. In hiiiiindsiiiiiight, I prefer Hiiiiiiindsiiiiiight.
 
I’m not expecting NP to change the rules but won’t 64 rounds, one match each, be too slow? Personally, I would prefer 32 rounds, two matches in each round, and then the next stage.
 
Jer said:
I thought he wanted to be sure people could listen to each song in full once, and was then going to double up matches on future rounds once everyone’s heard everything already.
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Yes, that is all written in the first post.
 
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